


night train to miyagi

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bars and Pubs, Broken Engagement, Denial of Feelings, Drinking, Drunken Confessions, How Do You Even Tag Things, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, It ends okay, M/M, Mutual Pining, i guess, i like making my favorite characters suffer at 2am, iwaoi - Freeform, that's better than my last fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 13:24:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6330928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>every day starts like this: he stands in front of the bathroom and stares at himself in the eyes and repeats a mantra in his head. that oikawa tooru is his best friend, that oikawa tooru is his dumbass best friend, and that he, iwaizumi hajime, is most definitely not in love with said dumbass best friend. </i>
</p>
<p>or: iwaizumi runs away and oikawa doesn't chase him. (or not while he's sober, at least.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	night train to miyagi

**Author's Note:**

> hi, your local iwaoi angst writer reporting back in.
> 
> i have a terrible habit of spontaneously writing painful au's at 2 in the morning when 1. i should be asleep and 2. i should be working more on my actual planned fics. i also can't write summaries to save my life.
> 
> unbeta'd.

_all this time I drank you like the cure when maybe you were the poison.  
_ **clementine von radics**

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When Iwaizumi Hajime is thirteen, he falls in love with a boy made of glass, with a crystal heart and fire running through his veins. They have a bond forged in sweat and blood, in laughter and tears, in the scuff of sneakers across the court and the swish of a ball off calloused fingertips.

But Iwaizumi Hajime has been taught that boys are not meant to love boys and so he pretends, pretends that what he feels for his best friend is nothing more than platonic affection and simple appreciation, pretends that he doesn’t ever think about kissing a mouth the color of watermelon on summer days, pretends that the person he imagines when his hand comes to rest between his legs doesn’t smile with eyes flecked with liquid gold and a nose sprinkled with stardust.

When Oikawa Tooru receives a confession for the first time two days later, Iwaizumi Hajime pretends that he is happy.

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Oikawa gets dumped within a week. He cries, and Iwaizumi cries with him.

He tells Oikawa it’s out of sympathy.

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Oikawa dates a grand total of seven girls in the next five years. Each of them turns to Iwaizumi with a smile and a laugh, sometimes a “oh my, is this the famous Iwa-chan?” and Iwaizumi smiles back, a grin plastered across his face before he walks home by himself and rips it off.

Every day ends like this, standing in front of the mirror, feeling around his mouth as if he looked closely enough maybe he could find the tear he knows is somewhere inside of him. If only it were as easy as washing off a smile drawn with the crude brush of a teenage boy’s feelings, still clumsy in his hands, but no, it comes off like a band-aid, exposing a spot that never quite seems to heal, leaving him red and ragged around the edges.

Every day starts like this: he stands in front of the bathroom and stares at himself in the eyes and repeats a mantra in his head. That Oikawa Tooru is his best friend, that Oikawa Tooru is his dumbass best friend, and that he, Iwaizumi Hajime, is most definitely not in love with said dumbass best friend. He shoves his heart inside a cage with trembling fingers and on the bars are engraved laughter like the sun and a face like the night sky, filled with constellations. He never quite manages to keep it in there, but he still tells himself it doesn’t hurt anymore.

_(It does, but Iwaizumi Hajime has always been good at pretending.)_

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_“do you love me?” I ask._  
in your hesitation, I found my answer.  
**love & misadventure – lang leav**

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It’s a rare break from practice, so Iwaizumi is not at all surprised to find Oikawa alone in the gym after school, hitting serve after serve.

“Take a break, Oikawa,” he yells. “There’s no practice today for a reason.”

Oikawa gives him a quick glance before tossing the ball in his hands back into the basket. He trudges over to the bench with his usual easy smile and grabs his towel, wiping his forehead.

“I was going to leave soon,” he says lightly, but Iwaizumi sees his fingers clench just barely against the white fabric. “I’ve got a date with Shizuku-chan, you know.”

Iwaizumi is about to reprimand him, but as he looks into Oikawa’s eyes he sees something different than the usual bright spark of childish excitement. This time he sees clouds, a turbulent uncertainty, the static friction of thunder, the quiet before a storm. He sees a question, and it scares him because Oikawa is never uncertain. Oikawa was always the one who dived in headfirst with a smile on his lips and the sun shining in his eyes while Iwaizumi trailed a step behind.

Iwaizumi turns away. “Well, go get ready then,” he replies. “It’s not like it’s my business anyway.”

When he looks back, Oikawa is already on the way to the locker room. He waves with a bright “See you later then, Iwa-chan!” and flashes his usual smile.

_(It doesn’t reach his eyes, but Iwaizumi pretends he doesn’t notice.)_

Iwaizumi walks home alone that day, feeling oddly like he gave the wrong answer.

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Oikawa never tells him when his dates are, and Iwaizumi never asks. He still feels a strange sense of disappointment lodging itself in his stomach like a brick when he thinks back to the last time Oikawa had told him about one.

Iwaizumi still waits by the school gates every day after school, if only for a few minutes before he understands that Oikawa is with someone else, someone with a voice that isn’t low and rough and a face that doesn’t bear a constant, irritated scowl.

_Not you, you mean._

“Shut up,” Iwaizumi growls as he swings his bookbag onto his back and begins the walk home, alone.

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_I told you to hide your heart once. you should have listened.  
_ **red queen – victoria aveyard**

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When Iwaizumi Hajime is eighteen, his best friend of thirteen years turns around after the graduation ceremony and asks him a simple question.

“Iwa-chan, did you ever care?”

Iwaizumi feels his mouth go dry. His heart rattles violently inside its cage, and in a fit of pique he finally shuts the door and turns the key.

“What are you talking about, Shittykawa?”

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They go to different universities with promises of regular Skype chats and phone calls, but four years of pre-med and research and papers and organic chemistry pass by in the blink of an eye, and when Iwaizumi sits down at his computer on his first free day in forever, after med school applications and grad school interviews and a second farewell under the cherry blossoms, he hasn’t touched Skype for months, maybe years.

He doesn’t remember who stopped calling first.

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When Iwaizumi Hajime is twenty-five and finally out of that goddamn residency, he returns to his hometown to visit his parents.

He sees Hanamaki on the way to the grocery store. They exchange the typical courtesies, _how have you been, how’s your family, still playing volleyball?_

Hanamaki asks him with a pointed glance, “Hey, have you talked to Oikawa recently?” The air is charged with tension. Iwaizumi is reminded of another moment from what seems like a lifetime ago, another time and place where there was an answer expected and another answer received.

Iwaizumi fidgets with his hands. “No, we kind of… lost touch.”

Hanamaki sighs and rubs his neck, looking away from Iwaizumi. “Well, while you were busy studying your ass off, Oikawa got engaged.”

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Iwaizumi eats his dinner alone in his room. He can’t stand the questioning of his parents, a conversation that will inevitably lead back to his next-door neighbor, as far as they know, his best friend of twenty years.

He leans back in his chair with a sigh and stares at the window in front of him and the tightly-shut curtains that used to be thrown open every night, waiting for the blinking of a flashlight. He would stay up hours, waiting for Tooru – Oikawa – to open his window on the other side and toss over the shoddy styrofoam-cup-and-string “phone” he was so proud of. They would stay up staring at the stars, Oikawa talking his ear off about this constellation and that while Iwaizumi grinned and listened.

Iwaizumi stands up and grasps one of the curtains. He stands there, frozen for a moment.

_Oikawa got engaged._

Iwaizumi drops his hand.

_Engaged._

Iwaizumi sits back down heavily on his chair, barely registering the wetness on his cheeks. He imagines Oikawa standing at an altar before a faceless girl in a white dress, imagines Oikawa kissing her before the priest, imagines –

The feeling that surges through him is so red and hot it leaves him burning inside and gasping for breath. It is possessiveness, he realizes. Like some kind of delusional, middle-school girl, he had always thought that he and Oikawa were connected by some kind of fate, linked by strings of destiny – that Oikawa was _his_ , no matter who tried to take him away. That even though Oikawa had dated girls, he had always come back to Iwaizumi, and Iwaizumi had taken taken it for truth that it would always be that way.

_He’s not coming back this time, you know._

“Shut up,” Iwaizumi growls as he buries his face in his hands, acutely aware of the icy tears that fall against his fingers like shooting stars.

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_every time I look at you I'm reminded of how I can never stop loving you.  
_ **hafsa shah**

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Iwaizumi Hajime sits at the bar, downing his fifth glass in the last half hour. The room is hazy and dark, full of unfamiliar faces. The alcohol swirls slowly in his stomach and a comforting warmth spreads through his body. His head feels slightly light and dizzy, and he can’t muster enough care to worry that he might be making a bad impression.

Someone sits down next to him and Iwaizumi is about to move to the other side of the bar when he looks up into brown eyes flecked with just the smallest hints of gold and nearly falls off his stool.

“Iwaizumi.” The voice and the name are both so familiar, but not together, and the combination makes his chest ache.

_Dammit,_ he thinks, looking at the boy who used to be so familiar to him, who he could read completely in the smallest movements and slightest glances. He looks the same, just a little older. Iwaizumi looks down at Oikawa’s hands. The silver ring glints dully under the low light. Iwaizumi clenches his fists as his heart hammers heavily inside his chest.

“Oikawa.”

Oikawa grins lazily, an unfamiliar one that stretches slowly across his face. It reminds Iwaizumi of Kuroo, and he vaguely remembers an old message Oikawa sent him about how his roommate was that “Nekoma kid with the _insufferable_ bedhead.”

“God, Iwaizumi,” Oikawa slurs, and Iwaizumi realizes that, somehow, Oikawa is even more drunk than he is. “It’s been so long.”

“You’re drunk, Oikawa,” Iwaizumi narrows his eyebrows.

Oikawa giggles and hiccups once. “Of course I am, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you otherwise.”

“Oikawa, you’re not making sense right now.”

“Nah, I make total sense,” Oikawa waves his left hand in the air with a grin. The one with the ring, Iwaizumi notes, and his chest tightens. Even drunk, Oikawa’s face shines in the dull dark haze in the bar, a soft red flush across his cheeks.

Iwaizumi is seized with a sudden urge to kiss every single of the freckles sprinkled across his nose.

“So, Hanamaki told me,” he manages, gesturing vaguely to the ring. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

Oikawa’s grin slides off his face. He turns away from Iwaizumi. “Kuriyama Shizuku.”

_Shizuku._ The name dredges up memories of a day from another lifetime, the hard smack of serves against a gym floor, eyes filled with thunder and rain and storm.

“I see,” Iwaizumi replies softly, voice strangled by the words he cannot say.

Oikawa turns back and reaches over, grabbing Iwaizumi’s drink and downing it in one gulp. “She was the one who reminded me the most of you, Iwa-chan,” he mumbles, barely audible.

Iwaizumi barely has time to register his words before Oikawa slumps against the bar counter, eyes closed. Asleep or passed out, Iwaizumi isn’t sure. He pays the bartender for Oikawa’s drinks and his, and leaves.

He stops at the corner store for a six-pack of beer and downs it in his room, alone.

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A few days later, Iwaizumi’s phone rings. An unknown number with a local area code. He lets it go to voicemail.

“Iwaizumi-san? This is Kuriyama Shizuku. I’d like to talk sometime. Please call me back and let me know. Thanks.”

Kuriyama Shizuku.

Oikawa’s fiancée.

_Shizuku-chan_.

Iwaizumi picks up his phone and deletes both the voicemail and the phone number.

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The next Friday, Iwaizumi finds himself at the bar again. The bartender slides him a shot of his favorite whiskey and Iwaizumi smiles both gratefully and a little sheepishly.

It’s barely been ten minutes before Iwaizumi feels a familiar warmth spreading through his veins and a relaxing haziness in his head, and he sighs, content. Staying in Miyagi means remembering, and being able to forget, if only for a night, does wonders for his sanity.

Until a familiar face takes the seat next to him yet again.

“Oikawa, what –“ Iwaizumi starts, but Oikawa just presses his hand against Iwaizumi’s mouth, cutting him off. He waves his left hand in the air with a grin, and Iwaizumi has a sudden sense of deja vu.

“Yes, I know, we talked about this last week,” Iwaizumi says as tonelessly as he can, looking anywhere but Oikawa’s face.

Oikawa shoves his hand in front of Iwaizumi’s eyes and Iwaizumi shoves him back before he realizes that Oikawa’s middle finger is bare.

“Where’s the ring?” he manages, heart leaping up into his throat before he squeezes it back down.

Oikawa gives a short, rueful laugh. “She broke it off.”

Iwaizumi peers at him closely. “You don’t look too sad.”

Oikawa shrugs and downs the glass in front of him. “She was right.”

“About what?” Iwaizumi asks.

“She told me it wasn’t fair to either of us. For me to be with her when my heart was with someone else. She heard me talking in my sleep. A name. She called you this week, didn’t she?”

Iwaizumi hesitates before nodding wordlessly. Oikawa sighs. The bartender slides another glass in front of him.

“Look, Iwa-ch- Iwaizumi,” Oikawa mumbles, staring into his drink. “I’m drunk right now, and this bartender is one giant fucking enabler. So I’m going to drink this and I am going to do something very, very stupid, and I want you to tell me that you’ll forget about it and we’ll go on with our lives.”

Iwaizumi can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his pulse racing. His best friend of thirteen years and a stranger of seven, is sitting in front of him, drunk, face flushed with alcohol, and across his cheeks Iwaizumi sees meteors and comets and shooting stars, the night sky and the shining sun all in one and suddenly Oikawa is leaning forward, and in his lips Iwaizumi can taste the smoky haze of the bar and the bitter bit of alcohol, and all he can think is that Oikawa tastes _amazing._ His head is spinning and his heart is pounding and he _loves_ it, loves the heat spreading warm and fast through his body, sparks flying across his skin as Oikawa brings his hands up around Iwaizumi’s neck, pulling him closer as his kiss grows deeper, hungrier.

They come apart gasping, and Iwaizumi searches Oikawa’s eyes, not sure what he is looking for. They are half-closed and almost predatory, glinting with gold despite the low light. Iwaizumi shivers and reaches out for Oikawa’s cheek tentatively, ghosting his fingers across Oikawa’s skin, feeling a burning heat everywhere he touches. They stay like that for a moment, irises colored with desire, speaking in the way they always did, with the lightest touches and the slightest glances.

That is, until Oikawa’s eyes close and he slumps against the bar.

Iwaizumi stares in disbelief for a minute before sighing and paying the bartender. For both their drinks. Again.

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_we leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place. we stay there, even though we go away. and there are things in us that we can find again only by going back.  
_ **night train to lisbon – pascal mercier**

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Oikawa wakes up in his bed, head pounding. He can only remember flashes of the previous night, with all that he had to drink to muster up the courage to approach Iwa-chan for a second time, and he’s not all that sure whether they’re memories or dreams considering just how _ridiculous_ and _inconceivable_ they are and although Oikawa Tooru might be a frivolous man, he was most definitely not _reckless_ and there was no way that –

“You’re finally awake, Shittykawa,” he hears a familiar voice say.

Oikawa sits up suddenly, wincing as his temple twinges in protest. Maybe the images in his head weren’t so ridiculous after all. “Iwa-chan? What are you doing here?”

“Someone had to take care of you,” Iwaizumi replies gruffly from his seat on Oikawa’s floor. “You have a really bad habit of passing out at bars, you know?”

Oikawa narrows his eyebrows. “That’s not what I meant. I meant – I mean, I told you… I told you to forget about it. And go on with your life.”

Iwaizumi looks up at him with a smile. “This is me going on with my life, Oikawa. With you.”

Oikawa stares at him for a moment before snorting. “Oh my god, you’re so cheesy.”

 “Oi, I thought I sounded really cool just now!” Iwaizumi sputters, face turning an alarming shade of red, and as Oikawa throws his arms around Iwaizumi with a laugh, he thinks that maybe being reckless once in a while isn’t quite so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> //scrolls down goodreads for more angsty quotes//
> 
> i casually stole the title from the last quote. haven't read the book or watched the movie, but it's got a 42% on rotten tomatoes so im not sure if i want to.
> 
> hope that wasn't too bad, concrit is _greatly_ appreciated! definitely still a newbie to this fic-writing thing (but i'm quite good at reading them, lemme tell you) and am always looking to improve!!


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